Bangalore: HP unveiled a new research indicating that the cost and frequency of cybercrime have both continued to rise for the third straight year.

According to the third annual study of U.S. companies, the occurrence of cyber attacks has more than doubled over a three-year period, while the financial impact has increased by nearly 40 percent.

Conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by HP, the 2012 Cost of Cyber Crime Study found that the average annualized cost of cybercrime incurred by a benchmark sample of U.S. organizations was $8.9 million. This represents a 6 percent increase over the average cost reported in 2011, and a 38 percent increase over 2010. The 2012 study also revealed a 42 percent increase in the number of cyber attacks, with organizations experiencing an average of 102 successful attacks per week, compared to 72 attacks per week in 2011 and 50 attacks per week in 2010.

“Organizations are spending increasing amounts of time, money and energy responding to cyber attacks at levels that will soon become unsustainable,” said Damanjit Singh Uberoi, chief solutions architect & evangelist, South Asia HP Enterprise Security Products. “There is clear evidence to show that the deployment of advanced security intelligence solutions helps to substantially reduce the cost, frequency and impact of these attacks.”

The most costly cybercrimes continue to be those caused by malicious code, denial of service, stolen or hijacked devices, and malevolent insiders. When combined, these account for more than 78 percent of annual cybercrime costs per organization.